| ISLAMABAD - Federal Government Employees Housing Authority is trying to hide more than one hundred illegal entries in a built up property award of sector G-14 and is reluctant to send the case to the Federal Investigation Agency to fix responsibility over its own officers to avoid a backfire.
The authority declined to give promised plots as compensation in lieu of the aforesaid entries to the land affectees by citing them ‘against the policy’ but at the same time it is showing lethargy to take action against its own officer, who committed this fraud.
Built up Property’s (BUP) award means assessment of houses present on a certain piece of land at the time of its acquisition against which the acquiring authority pays compensation and rehabilitation benefits as per its policy.
In the instant case regarding BUP’s award of Sector G-14/2 and G-14/3, those who have their houses in the area were promised to give plots in Sector G-15 as rehabilitation benefit.
As the FGEHA did not have the authority to acquire the land at that time, the ICT administration being competent authority had issued a BUP’s award in 2014 having the names of 406 families with multiple numbers of BUP’s in front of over one hundred families’ serial number.
The award was never challenged at any forum by FGEHA and after getting approval from competent authority the provisional allotment letters were also issued by the housing foundation in 2017 as per said BUP award and nobody bothered to resist or even object if the entries were wrong.
In the meantime, most of the local land owners, who got provisional allotment letters from the authority, also sold their plots to third parties as it was a routine practice in Islamabad and even FGEHA never declared said multiple entries as ‘illegal’ or ‘bogus.’
Later, in 2022, the balloting to allot plot numbers in sector G-15 was also held in which these BUP holders were also allotted plot numbers and results were made public on the website as well.
However, when the allottees approached for the allotment letters and people who purchased plots on the basis of provisional allotment letters to get them transferred on their names, the FGEHA has declined to issue allotment letters to those families having multiple entries in BUP’s award by declaring it against the rules.
When approached, Director Land FGEHA Ihsan Elahi said as per the policy we consider a dwelling unit eligible for a plot only but some local land owners managed multiple entries on the name of their children to get more plots but in fact they were living in the same house.
He categorically said that all such multiple entries are illegal and we cannot allot them multiple plots, however, when questioned who is responsible for making such multiple entries, he had no answer to the question.
Mr. Elahi also informed that some of the local land owners approached the Islamabad High Court but their writ petitions were dismissed as the court endorsed our point of view.
Some of the locals, who spoke to this scribe, informed that multiple entries were rightly mentioned in the BUP’s award by ICT administration as there were more than one houses within one boundary and it is a common trend of joint houses across the Potohar region.
They said even if the multiple entries were made illegally then why Provisional Allotment Letters were issued by the authority to us in 2017 when we handed over the possession of our ancestral houses to them.
Director General Housing Foundation Tariq Rasheed, besides accepting that the provisional allotment letters were issued illegally, said I don’t think that the matter needs to be referred to any investigating agency.
However, the local landowners and third parties who have been waiting for their benefits since last one decade demanded to send the matter to the Federal Investigation Agency to fix the responsibility on officers if they made bogus entries and issued allotment letters according to them. |
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